he never says they hurt you, he simply says that they are of no benefit. those are very easy to spot - from news sites, mixed in with 10-15 other paid links too.
I think Google is possibly blocking PR transfer or link text benefits from sites that sell links in a massive ammount, that would explain why MC talks about an earlier site.
Google could have simply signed up for a text-link-ads account and wrote down all the domain names selling ads. LOL
Actually MC admits that paid links might help.... "and the paid links that might have helped them last year just weren’t doing them any good now" So the paid links most likely *did* help last year. The page with paid links has now been identified, and OBLs are probably ignored. But that suggests that as long as G has not identified the paid links, OBLs count. /*tom*/
Does it not occur to anyone else that text links, whether bought, reciprocated, or put into a skin, script or design, are in reality a form of advertising older than google and it's pagerank algorhythm based on incoming links? Perhaps Yahoo and MSN should penalize pages that use adwords...
That was a good one I read his post and also the reviews of the other sites on the SES, very interesting read. But it is clear that some paid backlinks won't hurt you, just no benefit. Quite interesting that they can know a lot more than I thought.
I heard him specifically asked this exact question at pubcon (its actually on the video I have also) and he says that "paid backlinks will not hurt you they just will not count if google finds out about them and they are getting better at finding out about them all the time" The reason it was brought up was cause barry from serountable.com had just given a talk about how he makes money on his blog and that he makes a good chunk from selling text links. Matt Cutts went on to say that good seo's will tell you that paid backlinks should be considered good for traffic but not for serps. (obviously he was caught a little off tilt after his friend barry had just given a discussion on how he makes good money from that) This was a great example because you can see all the "Search Engine Optimization" links on seroundtable.com. So basically he said these links would not hurt sites but would not help them for serps.
So they are spending time finding paid links, only to discount them. I don't suppose that they discussed 302 redirect links and the problems they cause with the fair ranking of sites - or have spent much time or effort on them... http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=43329 They are still out there, folks. I have no clue why this one puts out 200 status codes... scary, really.
Yup actually Matt took questions for hours in the lunch room... you could just walk up and ask him anythink you wanted. He was super nice. People were giving out there websites and sites that were beating them and he had a person with a laptop right next to him looking stuff up and marking stuff... Was pretty interesting.
Yup actually Matt took questions for hours in the lunch room... I heard questions ranging anything from 302 to blackhatseo to dmoz to you name it. This was not the coffee talk session this was in the lunch room and there was only like 20 people at any given time. you could just walk up and ask him anythink you wanted. He was super nice. People were giving out there websites and sites that were beating them and he had a person with a laptop right next to him looking stuff up and marking stuff... Was pretty interesting. And honestly I think I explained/quoted wrong. What he actually says is there method of dedecting paid advertising is getting better all the time. If I had to guess I would say they are aging links but I honestly have no clue.
There is, of course, no contradiction in those terms, though. Some pixel-sellers have made money from selling pixels. In the Aaron Wall interview, Cutts said he admires the enterprise of the million dollar page guy but added "I hope people realize that they aren't getting any PR benefit from those pixels". Barry may be making money, even a lot of money, from selling text links. That doesn't mean the people buying those links are actually getting any benefit. "There's one born every minute." ~ P.T. Barnum
SE benefit. But there could be traffic benefit from it? I dunno how much traffic those sites get, but at the right price, a non-effective (in a PR sense) link is still worthwhile.
Matt Cutts, aka Google interface with human attributes mentions in his blog that buying backlinks may not be a good thing for your site. In a Q & A session;
Very interesting, thanks mcfox. I'm not going to buy anymore links - seems google only wants natural linking.
I am not promoting Buying Text link, infact I am against that... but you have to see, which SE you r looking for.... Yes it has some better effect in MSN and YAHOO, but google, no effect at all.
I'd say it points the way for the future of both Yahoo and MSN. Perhaps not in the immediate future but certainly it's an indication of the general direction the search engines will take.